Compact, extremely lightweight, deployable RF antennas are key to enabling state-of-the-art RF communications and sensing on a microsatellite platform. Deploying a highly compacted, electronically functioning antenna to the required rigidity, size, and pointing accuracy is an extremely challenging problem. Though considerable effort has been invested in the development of deployable structures and antennas, there is currently no fully functional deployable antenna that is compatible with microsatellite platforms. For example, although large reflector antennas achieve suitable gain (dBi) values, they exhibit very low antenna efficiency and require very large physical antenna areas that are heavy and difficult to transport and deploy. Inflatable reflective array antennas and waveguide array antennas require substantially smaller physical antenna areas, but exhibit lower gain values and only slightly higher antenna efficiencies. Inflatable passive array antennas also have small physical antenna areas and achieve higher antenna efficiencies, but have low gain values and difficulty holding tight dimensional tolerances.
What is needed is a deployable high-gain, high efficiency antenna having a lightweight architecture optimized for use on microsatellite platforms that overcomes the problems associated with conventional deployable antenna solutions.